Sunshine Coast Hinterland Times

THE Sunshine Coast, particularly its Hinterland has, in recent years, taken new directions in the growing of sustainable food ventures as well as the packaging and marketing of local niche food items.

So, it was with interest that the Hinterland Times saw the latest edition of the Griffith REVIEW which is devoted to the global food chain.

It includes essays and reportage about the skewed policies of growing, marketing and distributing food.

REVIEW editor, Julianne Schultz says that “the disconnection between food production and consumption, between the food available to the rich and the rest is now a matter of global anxiety.”

On these pages we have published extracts from several REVIEW articles and recommend readers to go on line to read them in full. It is a remarkable read for those devoting their energies to a rebirth of ‘slow’, ‘natural’ and ‘local’ food initiatives.

The Hinterland Times gratefully acknowledges Griffith REVIEW (Text Publishing) for permission to publish extracts from Edition 27: Food Chain. For access to the complete REVIEW articles go to: www.griffithreview.com or to obtain a print copy email: griffithreview@griffith.edu.au

If you want to comment about what you have read about food chain issues also log on to: www.hinterlandtimes.com.au

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Enjoy a special subscription offer from Griffith REVIEW: subscribe online at www.griffithreview.com with the promo code HT2010 and receive a FREE copy of Griffith REVIEW 25: After the Crisis, plus save 20% or more on a one or two year subscription. You will receive Edition 27: Food Chain as your first edition.

We are what we eat

Julianne Schultz

EVEN IN Australia, a country with abundant supplies of quality food, anxiety is growing. Talk about water allocations and licences masks the truth of

a diminishing harvest from much of the Murray‐Darling. Senator Bill Heffernan’s advocacy of the deeply embedded dream

of a northern food bowl is less the reassertion of a national fantasy than a farmer’s intimate understanding of the connection between production and

consumption. The ambitious plan to make Tasmania the new national food bowl is the product of original thinking not constrained by established verities…

If we are what we eat, Australia is profoundly different to the country of my ’60s childhood. These days we eat food that is grown here, much of it processed by large transnational companies with headquarters in Japan, Europe and America. We buy it from supermarkets and grizzle about the prices, and wonder if this is sustainable and flock to farmers’ markets. We book out the best restaurants and churn through a global village of ethnic cafés. Schoolchildren follow Michelle Obama’s and Stephanie Alexander’s example and plant organic gardens. Cookbooks sell in extraordinary numbers, and cooking programs win the television ratings.

Now we are on the path to another major transformation – one that reintegrates the production and consumption of fresh local food into much longer food chains. The major chains have started organic food shops, a glamorous reworking of the local greengrocer.

Sustaining a nation

Margaret Simons

WHEN WE visited the Forbes saleyards last year – when lambs were being sold for four dollars a kilogram, dressed weight – lamb forequarter chops in Woolworths and Coles cost around eleven dollars a kilo. In between was transport, slaughter, more transport, butchering, the packing into plastic trays and all that is involved in maintaining the bright lights and cold cabinets of the modern supermarket. The profits on any one piece of meat are not big. The two big supermarket chains, Coles and Woolworths, make big money, but largely because of the volume of stuff they sell, rather than enormous mark‐ups. The industry relies on volume…

The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC)reported on the competitiveness of the grocery industry in 2008. It examined whether the rising price

of food was reflected in the prices paid to farmers, whether the supermarkets were taking unfair advantage. The resulting report was almost five hundred pages long. The supply chains for food are almost impossibly complex and various. ‘There is no

single story that can be told about the grocery supply chain in Australia,’ the report said…

The ACCC concluded that the big two supermarket chains, Coles and Woolworths, accounted for about half of all the fresh produce sold in Australia, and nearly three‐quarters of packaged goods, yet the industry was still ‘workably competitive’. There was keen price competition on the three hundred or so products the supermarkets knew customers used to assess value – including lamb chops and bread. Sometimes that meant these products were sold below cost to bring customers in. Sometimes the sheer volume of their purchases meant the big two were able to squeeze farmers on price. But the ACCC found no consistent evidence that farmers were being taken advantage of. Generally, higher prices in the supermarket were reflected in higher prices at the farm gate, it said. Despite the Horticulture Australia Council saying that 85 per cent of its members felt that growers were unwilling to raise concerns with major retailers for fear of retribution,

the ACCC found that the numerous anecdotes and allegations about standover tactics and threats by the big supermarket chains were not reflected in hard, actionable evidence…

The federal government sent the ACCC’s recommendations to an industry committee for assessment, but the committee members could not agree. Farmers worried that the changes would mean merchants would offer only very low prices so they would be more able to manage the risk of the market. Premium prices for growers would become a thing of the past. On 1 November 2009, the industry committee’s report was put aside for yet more consideration. There is no sign of speedy resolution. Meanwhile, the Minister for Agriculture, Tony Burke, acknowledged that at every link on the supply chain connecting growers to eaters, there are ‘considerable tensions’…

If we were to use water in the most economically rational fashion, we would grow vegetables ($1800 for each megalitre of water used), fruit ($1500) and grapes ($900). Such a decision would wipe out large communities – the cotton growers of Queensland, the rice growers of New South Wales, the dairy farmers of Victoria – with all the dislocation that entails.

If Australia were governed by wise dictatorship, there would be huge forced land‐use changes in the Murray‐Darling Basin. Some crops would not be grown. Some communities would be relocated. State governments would be forced to comply. Instead, the effort to save the basin is a matter of slow and uncertain negotiation, limited by our awkward federation. It is also a matter of the imperfect instrument of market forces.

Creating sustainably productive cities

Virginia Balfour

I if you like. ‘Oh, you can’t do that!’ she says in horror. ‘It’s illegal.’ Now, I’m not an anarchist, but when someone tells me that I can’t do what I want with a piece of land outside my front door, I get a bit indignant. I protest, but am told in no uncertain terms that, although I must look after it, that patch of grass is council land and the council wants it kept as grass. Another neighbour sidles up to me and whispers, ‘Do you want to buy some eggs?’ His tone is conspiratorial, as though he is trying to sell me an illicit drug. ‘Of course, if anyone ever asks, you’ll have to say you didn’t pay for them.’ He winks.

‘Just say you were given them and you paid a donation for the chickens’ upkeep.’ It seems that council policy doesn’t allow locals to sell their eggs to each other. You can give them away, but you can’t sell them. This is part of the problem. We need to create a green revolution within our urban areas, promoting the idea of organic‐vegetable growing and urban agriculture, but bureaucracy is thwarting us. Brisbane City Council has a vision for creating ‘Food in the City’, promoting ‘healthy and active lifestyles’ and providing grants for new community gardens across the city. And it is developing a new policy on street trees; they can be productive food trees, so long as your neighbours agree and the trees don’t cause a mess or a pest hazard. It’s a start, but it is still a way behind cities in other parts of the world…

Some great things are happening here with our kids, at least. My local primary school, Bulimba State School, is the Queensland showcase for the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program. The program, started in Victoria, teaches primary‐school students how to grow and use vegetables. In 2009 it went nationwide, starting in thirty‐seven schools around Australia and attracting $12.8 million in federal assistance. Each week schoolchildren spend at least forty‐five minutes maintaining a vegetable garden they helped to design and build on the school grounds. The program revolves around growing and harvesting, preparing and sharing, and aims to provide enjoyable food education to young people.

Feeding the world

Cameron Muir

THE GOAL of feeding the world is an admirable one, but it does not reflect the reality of Australian farming. Most of Australia’s wheat and meat are exported, and this has become the basis for a national myth, a comforting narrative that sees golden harvests and choice cuts being shipped and distributed to hungry mouths across the world. In 1925, the leading Australian meat‐industry figure John Cramsie declared that the development of the ‘unoccupied northern areas’ presented an opportunity to ‘feed the world with beef’. The prominent doctor and journalist Edward Gault gave an address in 1943 arguing that Australia should not only feed India and China, but ‘it should be a permanent measure for us to feed the world as a whole.’ After the sale of Toorale Station in 2008, the Nationals’ leader, Warren Truss, told parliament: ‘We cannot keep taking properties out of production and expect to meet our obligations to provide food to the world.’ Paul Myers, a former editor of The Land, wrote an editorial about agriculture and Toorale for the Sydney Morning Herald, asserting that Australian farmers ‘contribute significantly to global nutrition’.

In fact, Australia contributes less than 2 per cent of global food production. In 2004, Australian‐grown wheat and other cereals accounted for just 1.39 per cent of the world’s grain production…

We need to be honest about the role agriculture plays in Australia and start developing support for a fairer system for Australian farmers, the environment and farmers in developing nations. Trying to force a productionist culture of farming isn’t benefiting many people…

Australian farmers are among the least‐subsidised farmers in the OECD, but they compete against highly subsidised commodities on international markets. They benefit from access to machinery and research, but the inputs are high and the profits marginal.

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures for 2006/07 show nearly one quarter of Australian farms had an annual production value of less than $22,500, and nearly half brought in less than the average male full‐time wage of $57,000.

Food in the age of unsettlement

Tony Fry

BY 2009, according to United Nations figures, more than a billion people were hungry – more than ever before – with greater than two‐thirds of them living in the Asia‐Pacific. Despite epidemics of obesity in many countries, the annual global percapita intake of food is decreasing. The more agriculture is ‘liberalised’ in a ‘freemarket’ system, the more ‘high‐return’ crops are grown, the more food prices rise and the more people go hungry. When you ‘live’ on one dollar a day or less, as most of these hungry people do, even a small price increase can make the difference between a meal a day and a meal every other day…

During World War II, food grown in backyards, public parks and urban wastelands provided much of the food for the population at home in Britain, the US, Australia and other countries. If that method were applied today, it would drive an enormous amount of land use toward horticultural innovation. Vertical farming, which combines intensive methods such as hydroponics with the surface area cultivation of certain crops on multi‐storey buildings, is already underway.

Initiatives like this could make cities better, healthier and more sustainable places to live and work. Intensive urban agriculture is environmentally more sustainable, and can lead to positive urban development: it can generate small and large businesses, contribute to urban design, assist waste management, consolidate and build community, provide training and work opportunities for the unemployed, and improve health through increased exercise and better diet. It can also aid climate‐change adaptation – green roofs reduce the heating of thermal mass, and a cooler city means a smaller energy load.

Fishing like there’s no tomorrow

David Ritter

UNDER the euphemism of fishing, in pursuit of seafood, we are exterminating animals from the oceans: wiping out the larger predators, altering food webs and destroying habitats at a staggering rate and on a confounding scale, in an epic slaughter of life beneath the waves. The truth taints the palate. Starting in the fresh waters, in rivers and lakes, spreading to the coastal shallows and now rampant in the high and deep seas, we have stalked the stocks to the point of catastrophe. It is a darkly grand story of the reduction of our collective inheritance, and one little apprehended under the glaring lights of the fish‐market floor.

Worldwide, stocks of the great fish have been reduced by 90 per cent from 1950s levels. King cod is gone from the Grand Banks. Bluefin tuna is on the brink in the Mediterranean. The great billfish, such as marlin and swordfish, have been radically reduced in numbers. Sharks have become more hunted than hunter. Smaller species are in trouble, too: around two‐thirds of all fisheries exploited since the 1950s have collapsed. The overall global catch of all fish has now been in decline for two decades. One reputable, if not uncontroversial, study has forecast the disintegration of all presently exploited commercial fisheries before 2050…

The world’s fishing fleet is two and a half times larger than the oceans can sustainably support. Yet, more than a third of the global fishing industry’ revenues come from subsidies, which are currently estimated at around US$34 billion a year. We are funding the fishing industry to systematically destroy our shared inheritance. Japan is the world’s single largest seafood importer, eating far more fish than remain within its territorial waters. Australia’s fisheries are among the better managed, but the country is still a net importer of seafood. Europe’s shortfall has to be made up from somewhere. In the coastal waters of developing countries, trawlers sweep through, retaining the most lucrative fish for first‐world tables, but smashing and killing much else in their path, depriving developing populations of critical food resources. Stocks off the west coast of Africa are thought to have halved since 1945…

How many miles?

Tony Barrell

AT THE delicatessen counter of my local Woolworths supermarket – which promotes itself as ‘the fresh food people’ – in the inner‐Sydney suburb of Balmain, I saw some fillets of firm white‐fleshed fish for sale. They were, said the caption on the tray, ‘Nile perch’ imported ‘frozen’ from Uganda. I found this hard to believe, but the counter‐hand confirmed it. Yes, they were ‘fully imported’. Well, at least Woolworths says where its food comes from.

A week later I visited a small fish shop in the same suburb that sells a few fillets and shellfish. I asked for a handful of scallops, not noticing the caption. The man

at the counter told me with some pride that they were ‘Japanese’.

‘Japanese scallops?’ I said. ‘We are importing scallops from Japan?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Because they’re cheaper,’ said he…

I investigated what else was on offer in my part of Sydney. At a bigger Woolworths, in Leichhardt Market Place, I found more Nile perch fillets, priced at $11.98 (‘from Lake Victoria imp frzn produce of Uganda / Tanzania / Kenya’). There was also ‘basa’ from Vietnam, prawns from Thailand and China, barramundi from Taiwan and smoked cod from South Africa – all of which would have arrived here frozen, even though the permanent signage above the section says ‘Fresh Seafood’.

In the same centre, Aldi was offering a variety of frozen ‘white fish’ in packets, imported from New Zealand. Closer examination revealed these to be ‘red cod’ (skinless or with ‘skin on’) and ‘hoki’ (blue grenadier)…

I wrote to Woolworths and asked them why they still imported Nile perch from East Africa. The answers I got were, to say the least, opaque. Yes, they were aware that the fish was in short supply – although there was no acknowledgement that as a species it was ‘threatened’ – but that was due to the European trade, and in response Woolworths is no longer promoting the product. In the words of its media department: ‘As much of the Nile perch stock is heading to Europe we have therefore decided to stop advertising Nile perch to reduce demand for it through our stores. But while there is still a consumer demand for it we will continue to stock it.’

I couldn’t tell whether this meant Woolworths was running down stock and stopping imports, so I asked again. ‘Forgive me for seeming obtuse but is Woolworths running down existing stocks or still ordering supplies from Africa? Hope the question is clear.’

But answer came there none. Nile perch fillets are still on display, and were $16.49 when last spotted.